1. Area of the Art
The present invention is in the area of safety measures for sports and is more particularly directed to methods to prevent damage caused by breakage of athletic implements such as wooden bats used in playing baseball.
2. Description of the Background Art
Wood has long been for construction and fabrication of many objects ranging from buildings to furniture to tools. Wood has an unmatched combination of strength and lightness so that even in today's age of carbon fiber composites and other high technology materials wood is still in widespread use. Of course, wood does have a number of drawbacks depending on the application. Wood is flammable and can be affected by moisture: in wet situations wood may swell and distort whereas in dry situations wood may shrink and split. If wood is subjected to excess force, it may crack and fail. Nevertheless, wood is generally considered to be durable and dependable.
As a consequence, wood is often used for tool handles where its strength, relative lightness and shock absorbing properties are particularly valued. The tools are often objects used in various games such as, but not limited to, tennis racquets, golf clubs, croquet mallets, hockey sticks, cricket bats and baseball bats. It is known that these athletic tools may fail if abused or overtaxed. For example, if a wooden tennis racquet is swung so that the head of the racquet strikes a wall, the racquet head may well shatter. However, wooden athletic implements rarely fail unless misused. In the case of baseball bats although wooden bats may at times fail, it has previously been quite rare for a wooden bat to fail under the stresses of a normal game—it had been particularly unusual for bat failure to result in any significant damage.
More recently there has been a trend towards catastrophic failures of baseball bats during use. The bats shatter and wooden fragments become dangerous projectiles which have injured both players and spectators. This propinquity of baseball bats to shatter during use appears to be related to the replacement of traditional hickory and ash bats with those made of maple which bats are lighter and favored by players. When a maple bat fails, the wood shatters—virtually exploding—and large as well as small (sharp) fragments can be thrown a considerable distance. In fact, the failure of maple bats has become so pervasive that some thought has been given to banning the use of maple for safety reasons. Short of banning the use of maple, a number of more or less complex solutions to the problem have been proposed. For example, it has been suggested that bat manufacturers be forced to use CAT (computed tomography) scans and similar imaging technology to ensure that the wood used in bat manufacture is free from defects. However, there is as yet no evidence that detectable defects contribute to bat failure. Whatever defects lead to bat failure may not be readily detectable by any commonly used imaging system.
Also, it is far from clear that the failure does not develop over time in perfectly normal maple wood. Some commentators have favored the scanning and imaging the bats before or even during games. Not only is this solution unproven, it could well transform the baseball field into the image of a modern American airport—completely with lengthy delays as the bats are scanned (and possibly searched) prior to or even during play. A few commentators have even suggested that special “super maple trees” be grown ensure shatterproof wood. Unfortunately, modern forestry science is not well equipped to produce such a super tree. Furthermore, the process would be somewhat lengthy because even under ideal conditions, several years are needed to produce trees of sufficient diameter to produce baseball bats. Even then there is the distinct possibility the “super maple,” if actually produced, would have the weight and density of hickory wood—thereby obviating all the advantages of maple. Clearly, there is a need of a simple method to either predict or prevent failure of wooden bats.